There was just an understanding growing up. What you did was of no value unless someone else approved of it. Parents and adults approval was mandatory and was proof that you mattered. Good grades, teacher’s pet, and Daddy’s favorite. This also meant that you could never be enough. And so I became a teenage doormat.

I was invisible to myself. Credit for anything I ever did disappeared down a hole. Unless someone else was handing it to me, I dared not attempt to bestow it on myself. I never had a chance to trust in my own abilities because I didn’t know trusting myself was possible. I wasn’t earning the knowledge that I could give me the freedom me the freedom I needed from this perpetual hell . And the resulting person was a ghost. A phantom relying on others to see her and to validate her to feel justified to exist. Sadly, that is how I spent so much of my life never knowing there was any other way to live.

I was never without a boyfriend who usually needed me to somehow “save” him from himself. If I could save him and make him see invisible me and my worthiness then I was worth saving too. The strife and drama that would result from these efforts was at least proof that I was alive. And the pain somehow made me more real.

“If you love yourself, you will be surprised, others will love you.

Nobody loves a person who does not love himself.” –Osho–

I spent so many years desperate and alone looking for the right person, the true me, the answers, the approval, and redemption, wallowing in my self-pity and oblivious to my low self-esteem. Yet a tiny persistent voice said this was all crap and there were other ways to see myself that I had yet to discover.

To build ones self-trust and self-esteem is to look straight into the shit storm from whence you came and defy it’s direction. To pull every weedy thought of self-hatred and start complimenting your own efforts instead. To notice the patterns of accomplishments and self-renewal that have made up a life. And to seek inner sight for the answers to all of you questions.

I am far from done with my journey but I can honestly say that what you think of me no longer matters. No offense, but mine is the only true opinion of value. That I trust myself to do right by me and I take the opportunities to develop and learn from the life I’m choosing to live. That is how I am no longer laying my life down for others to wipe their feet on.

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My name is Shalagh Hogan, pronounced Shay-La. I'm the mother of a teen, a six year-old, and I turned 52 this year. This blog was born in 2011 and my hope and joy as a writer, an artist, and an uber-creative, is that by sharing my journey of self-discovery, others will gain inspiration and permission for their own journeys.

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